Along This Lonely Road
by RainaParker
Summary: This is a series of oneshots that look at the darkest moments the team face. PLEASE REVIEW!
1. Just the beginning

**Disclaimer: No infringement is intended. All belongs to CBS.**

**AN- Each is a one shot though some may carry on into short series contained within the larger work…this will be noted.**

**Warning: Character death in some including the first each chapter will note this as well.**

It was as if he had never existed. They say that memories live on forever and it gets better with time but _they_ are wrong. Every day he slips further and further away and there is nothing that can ever be done. There are no more memories to be made. It seems impossible that he was here not that long ago. He was here sitting at his desk, joking, reading, sipping coffee, and filling out paperwork. But that is no more, he is gone.

It seems that some days he will just walk into the bullpen laughing and explain that it was all some sort of a joke. We will all be so happy that none us will remember to be anger with him and everything will be back the way it should be, but that will never happen.

The worst moments are the moments where we forget that he is gone and we all have them. Those moments where we have to remind ourselves that he is truly gone. It is then that our hearts break again for him and for us.

His funeral is like a vivid dream that replays in my mind daily. It hurts more not less and I would wonder if the others feel this way too but I know that they do. I see them looking on his desk and I can tell that it is worse with each day. Each day we miss him more.

Everyone remembers that date with sorrow and when it has passes they seem fine again. But for me that date is just the beginning, to me it is the start of it all again. Today was his funeral two years ago. Yesterday was the calling hours, two years ago. I remember the bagpipes, they whisper to me that this will never be over.

But the hardest part is that everything else is still the same. So much is the same. People still smile and laugh, people still dance and fall in love. Our cases still pour in as if we have not just lost one of our own. Life goes on as if he was never here to be missed.

But he is missed and I wonder how long it will be before his absence drives us apart, out of the BAU, or just plan insane.


	2. Some Days

**Disclaimer: No infringement is intended. All belongs to CBS. **

**AN- Each is a one shot though some may carry on into short series contained within the larger work…this will be noted. **

Some days you wake up and you forget that you can never be who you are not. There is a time when you have to look at yourself in the mirror and be honest. You have to say to yourself what you hope no one else will ever see. That this is all an act. You can never reverse time and have your father back. You cannot make your mother well no matter what you do or how desperately you wish you could change her if only for a day. You have to say that you were never good enough.

And the worst fact that some days you have to admit, if only to yourself, is that you are never going to be good enough. Deep within your mind you see the signs and you wonder how long you have before it is obvious. You wonder how long you can hide the truth before it is seen. So you hide and you show only what you think is expected of you. You are the smart one who excels in academic forums.

It will consume you so you do what you must do on these days. You drink extra coffee and smile more often in the hope that they will not see. You say you were up late or had nightmares. Nightmares you blame on the last case, because nightmares are expected in your line of work, but questioning your own sanity, your place here among the best, that is not.


	3. Dull this Pain

**Disclaimer: No infringement is intended. All belongs to CBS. **

**AN- Each is a one shot though some may carry on into short series contained within the larger work…this will be noted. **

It was one of those cases that bring things back to you. And some things are better left in the past. Children were always the hardest but for Morgan, children who had been betrayed by those that they trusted they were the worst cases. Carl Buford came back to him after these cases and nothing could stop that but enough alcohol could on occasion dull it.

But to get to the dull everything had to be felt first and tonight the tears came pouring down his chiseled features as Garcia sat with him in his darkened apartment.

The memories flashed before his eyes. Memories that will never truly go away no matter how much he wishes they would. The first time it seemed wrong but in a way that was not definable, it was as if he was in the wrong, as if he had somehow caused this to happen and at the same time as wrong as it felt it was also as if he should just do it because he owed it to his mentor to do it.

The last time was the worst time. Just knowing that he would no longer have to deal with it after this day knowing he would soon leave for college that made it worse. As if in some way the finality of it proved that it had in fact happened.

As Morgan's shoulders shook with rasping tears Garcia just sat by him watching and wishing that she could take it all away but knowing that she never could. She wanted to reach out to him and hold him now when he needed her the most but she knew that her touch would remind him of another's and that he had to face this alone. With her by his side he was completely alone in this struggle to survive his past.

"You know I love you right? And that there was nothing you could have done." She whispered when his cry's had calmed.

"Yeah…" Derek breathed wondering if she was talking about the case or about Carl Buford "I do and I love you too."


	4. Mirror on the Wall

**Disclaimer: No infringement is intended. All belongs to CBS. **

**AN- Each is a one shot though some may carry on into short series contained within the larger work…this will be noted. **

**AN2- This story and some of the ones that follow will not always follow canon--meaning no Will or Henry or maybe sometimes they will be included or one not the other depending on how I feel about it at any given point. **

Looking in the mirror can almost traumatize you after some cases. The face staring at you looks just like the victims that are now in the ground. You imagine you family standing in the graveyard and wonder how so many families survive it. You think that you have done what you can and saved as many as possible but you know that the ones you couldn't still had families and you can never really do enough.

So on these days you put mascara on with your compact and pull your blond hair back without the use of a mirror hoping it looks good enough to fool the best profilers in the world.

You avoid those minds and go straight to your office to pour over case after case trying to decide who you have the best chance of saving. It is almost too cold of a process on days when the victims stare at you in the mirror. You go to the break room and wonder if they know that you can't bare them looking at you because you think all they see is the face of the last victim who you were so close to saving, because that is all you see.

You try to smile but they know it is fake and at the end of the day you know you will be called into Hotch's office and he will ask you if you are alright and you will smile at tell him that everything is fine and this time you will use you "press" smile and he will know you are lying and tell you to have a good night.

It is on days when you can't look at yourself in the mirror that you find yourself in this dive bar in the corner booth with a drink that you put Morgan under the table but you drink it anyway. You drink it for the faces that stare back at you, for the ones that live in your dreams and the ones that are in the ground.

You don't remember calling him. You don't remember him coming to the bar. You don't remember the ride home. But when you wake up in the morning he is sitting on your couch staring at the mirror above your coffee table.

"Morning" He smiles at you one of his, this is awkward and I have no idea what to say smiles.

"Sorry about that night" is all you can muster as the shame washes over you.

"Are okay?" He has worry written all over his face and you imagine that is what his face would look like at your funeral.

You can feel the tears start to fall as he stands and walk towards you. You will only realize later how his arms felt wrapped around you at nine in the morning on a Saturday as tears poured from your eyes. You will only realize later that his awkwardness disappeared when you needed him.

And as you remove all of the unnecessary mirrors from your house you will wonder if it is so you will not have to look at the victims staring back at you from within your own eyes or if it is so you will not need him to save you.


End file.
